Show Me the Money

Δημοσιεύτηκε: Αυγ 21 , 2014
Συγγραφέας: Tom Feinson

As ever it feels like little or no time has elapsed between the
end of one season and the beginning of another. The World Cup
serves to heighten those feelings, but here we are on the eve of
new season, that blissful period where our hopes, dreams and
aspirations are as yet undashed.

The glorious “Transfer Window” (unless of course you are
Southampton) enables teams to offload a dodgy left back or
temperamental winger (should that be whinger) and land a top
quality striker ‘Who is going to give us 30 goals a season’.

The problem is that it all comes down to money. “Show me the
money” as Cuba Gooding Jnr memorably demands of Tom Cruise in the
movie Jerry Maguire. How complicated can it be? The transfer window
is a simple auction with the highest bidder winning the spoils.
This is a refrain I hear all too often in the commercial world;
it’s a commodity product/service and price is the only issue. But
is it true?

There’s no doubt that the money side is critical but is it the
only thing? Even in such a binary environment football has been
amazingly inventive (not something often said) in generating
trading variables and identifying differential value, whether
that is by using the time variable creatively, sell-on clauses,
buy-out clauses, appearance bonuses, performance bonuses, image
rights - and so the list goes on. Some variables are more
bizarre than others. Here are a few of my favourites

A young premiership starlet found he was being introduced into
matches at the unusual time of 71minutes. Why? Because his previous
club had put a clause into his contract that saw them paid £10,000
every time he played 20mins or more for his new team.

A famous premiership player who enjoyed his pies suffered the
indignity of a “Weight Clause” in his contract that allowed him a
tolerance of 10% against a target weight or he would be fined. He
was fined 8 times in the first 6 months

An extrovert chairman inserted a clause in his manager’s
contract that allowed the chairman to change the team up to 45
minutes before kick-off.

An ex Liverpool player had an Olympic ski-jumper for a father;
you can guess what they ensured when signing him.

A German goalkeeper joining a Dutch team had a clause inserted
in his contract allowing him to leave if he suffered racist
hostility. He left after 3 months.

Another team were so worried about their player having booked a
seat on a commercial space flight that they banned him from
breaching the atmosphere during his 4yr contract.

A Congolese midfielder apparently stipulated that he would only
sign if it could be contractually arranged for his wife to take
cooking lessons. Not sure how that one went down at home.

A German striker stipulated a condition that a house would be
built for him for every year of his contract. I hope he was
specific about what he meant by a house, I hear rumours he was
provided something made of Lego.

One chairman insisted that a new signing, to show his
commitment, must eat some sheep testicles. To his credit the player
did, cooked with a little lemon and parsley.

A German manager had a clause in his contract which stated that
he could be sacked at any time if the club was less than 3 points
above the relegation zone after the eighth day of the season
(admirably specific). They weren’t and he was.

So the next time you feel blinkered by price take a leaf out of
football managers, chairman & agents book; get creative and
remember that the more variables a negotiator has the happier they
are.

On a similar subject I was fascinated to read some of the
details of Manchester United’s new shirt sponsorship deal with
Adidas. Again a pretty uncomplicated deal on the face of it –
Adidas paid a huge sum of money for their name to appear on the
player’s shirts. However it seems that roomfuls of lawyers have
spent months without sleep thrashing out the deal. Why is this?
Because when the numbers get so big it is even more critical to get
value for money and in particular de-risk the deal. If Manchester
United doesn’t qualify for the Champion’s League for two successive
seasons they will see their annual payments drop from £75m to
£52.5m. However, this clause won’t apply until the beginning of the
2015-16 season, which is a nice use of the time variable.
Manchester United has rather cutely balanced this clause with one
that gets them a bonus of £4m if they win the Champions League, FA
Cup or Premier League. This technique is known as Over and Under
and has enabled both parties to balance out risk of under
performance against the reward of over performance. Mind you I’m
not sure it was necessary for Adidas to mitigate against United
being relegated during the term of the contract.